Lost Footsteps

by Bel Mooney

  The other woman stood up unsteadily. ‘Not now,’ she said, ‘we’ll have time to talk about all that. But not now – let’s get some sleep. Are you feeling drunk?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good.’

  The phone rang once at daybreak, but clicked off as soon as Doina picked it up. She cried out with frustration, and Ana stood, white-faced, staring from the window.

  ‘I know it was Radu,’ said Doina.

  ‘He’ll try again.’

  Ana tried to imagine Radu and Ion, to place them in another environment, but could not. It was as if a part of her brain was cauterized: the part which felt, and could also taste, feel, smell, touch, see. She put out her hand to stroke the crumbling window sill, to insert a nail beneath a curl of paint, but although she stared down at her own limb, and saw its actions, she felt nothing. Drawing back her hand she observed, as if from a great distance, that it moved in slow motion, like a sea-creature far beneath the surface.

  Is this how it will be, now? Must I crawl through the rest of my life, like an old machine, waiting for the time I can see Ion again, not living until then? Because I will see him again. I will see him again. I will.

  Doina was cleaning the apartment, banging about with a broom so that small clouds of dust rose from neglected corners. She moved briskly, her blonde hair tied up in a scarf, her sleeves rolled up, slopping the mop in and out of the bucket with vigour. When the telephone rang again, she moved so quickly that the bucket tipped over, and a deluge of dirty water soaked the old woven rug.

  ‘Hallo … Radu? Hallo …?’

  Click.

  ‘Oh dear God!’ Doina slammed down the receiver and burst into tears. Her sobs doubled in intensity when she saw the mess all around. For a few seconds Ana stared at her without moving; indeed, it occurred to her, for a terrifying instant, that she would not move, that this weeping person was nothing to do with her, observed as she was from such an icy pinnacle of grief. Then Doina covered her face with her hands, and the tall, strong woman looked suddenly so pathetic and vulnerable, that Ana was pierced by her pain. Once again she had power in her limbs: she rushed to Doina, and put her arms around her, and cried with her.

  ‘Doina?’ Ana asked later. ‘I meant to ask you both. How did Radu manage to save so much money? I thought…’

  ‘You were right. He couldn’t sell his work here. But nine months ago a man came to Timişoara, an art dealer from England. Someone had given him Radu’s name, and he came here.’

  ‘That was dangerous.’

  Doina shrugged. ‘He thought the early work was magnificent, and offered to buy quite a lot. He was planning an exhibition of artists from Eastern Europe – he was going on to Czechoslovakia, Poland. I think it’s the fashion in England now, to buy the oppressed artists. Anyway, Radu loaded our car with work, and they met out in the countryside, and the man gave Radu hard currency, of course … and it changed everything. We’ve been saving up for years, as well, in case the chance ever came, and Radu’s been in contact with Muller – so.’ She looked around and grimaced. ‘It’s a pity that man can’t come back. There’s plenty of Radu’s work left.’

  ‘Will you keep it?’

  Doina seemed to avoid Ana’s eyes. She stood up briskly, a curious twitch at the corners of her mouth, almost like a smile. ‘We’ll see. I’m waiting to see …’ she said, mysteriously.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Not now, Ana. Wait.’

  Hours passed. Ana tried to read, but the words would not stay still and made her dizzy. Doina was making a tapestry – stylized red and green flowers on a black ground – with a steady, sweeping movement of the needle that was soothing to both women. From time to time she would glance up, meet Ana’s eyes, and smile slightly, or else sigh. No words were said. Ana felt she had never before been so close to Doina, and wondered how she would be able to return to Bucharest alone.

  She was just imagining what it would be like to stay in Timişoara, beginning again somehow, when someone rapped on the door and both women jumped, looking at each other with huge, frightened eyes.

  ‘If it’s someone for Radu, he’s taken Ion out, to show him around,’ Doina hissed, as she rose.

  Ana shivered. ‘It may be Securitate?’

  ‘They’ve got their hands too full with the Hungarians in this town to bother with us.’

  ‘You’d better answer it.’

  Doina opened the door. A tall, fair young man stood there, willowy and with an almost-girlish look, despite his pale moustache. Ana saw Doina’s shoulders drop with relief, as she stood back to let him enter the room, closing the door quickly behind him.

  ‘Ana, this is Dan Chindris. He used to teach history with me.’

  ‘I still teach history. She left, I stayed. I suppose one of us had to keep all the lies going.’ The man grinned, and stepped forward to kiss Ana’s hand in the old-fashioned manner. She found herself embarrassed and mistrustful, resenting Doina for allowing someone to disturb their vigil. And Dan was turning to Doina as if there was some collusion between them.

  ‘Well?’ he asked.

  ‘No news. But it’s done.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘We wait.’

  ‘But – everything is OK …’ ‘We wait.’

  She has told someone about the plan. She actually told someone! And she’s obviously close to him – were they having an affair? We were talking about secrets … What do any of us know about those we think we know? Even those we live with. Radu, are you betrayed? Maybe it will only be days before she’s living with this man. He’ll move in here. No wonder she was cleaning the place … Oh Radu! … And my Ionica, where are you now?

  Dan Chindris was looking at Ana with a puzzled expression, and she realized she was chewing at her lip savagely, so that her face was twisted into a grimace. Doina noticed too. She put a hand on Dan’s arm, as if to stop him saying anything else, and gently steered him towards the door. ‘I don’t want to talk any more now, Dan. I need to … Well, let’s just wait, shall we? I’ll telephone you with the message about the wedding.’

  ‘If you say so.’ Dan Chindris hesitated by the door, his eyes fixed on Doina’s face. There was a short silence: Dan stroked his moustache nervously, as if waiting for Doina to say something, but she simply shrugged. Then, reluctantly, he left, and Doina leaned on the door with a sigh of relief.

  ‘He shouldn’t have come here. The neighbours watch who comes and goes,’ she said.

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘Just a friend. We used to teach together …’

  ‘Yes, he said that.’

  Doina heard the coldness in Ana’s voice, and smiled wryly. ‘I know what you’re thinking, Ana.’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘I know Radu’s plan was a secret, but I told this one friend, that’s all, and for good reason.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Yes.’ Doina’s voice had a sound of finality. She looked defiantly at Ana, and sat down at the table once more, picking up her tapestry.

  But Ana did not want to join her as before; the tension in the room filled her ears and nose and mouth, so that she felt suffocated. She stood in silence for a few seconds, looking at Doina, willing her to say something comforting, but she plied her needle silently. So Ana walked through to the tiny bedroom to lie on the bed. She seemed to smell Ion’s hair on the pillow, and curled up like a foetus, burying her head there, seeking that fragment of memory, chasing it down the corridors of her senses – tearless, in case it should be washed away. She heard a groan: a yearning, animal sound that seemed to echo around the room, and knew it came from deep within her, beyond her control. She stuffed the sheet in her mouth, afraid Doina would hear. Then there was darkness, as she fell asleep at last.

  The telephone woke her, and for a moment she thought she was in her apartment in Bucharest, and that something had gone wrong. She should be out queuing for food, not wasting time, and what about taking Ion to school? Why hadn’t he come to wake her? Confused a
nd panicking, she sat up straight and wondered what to do. Then she realized where she was, and with that awareness came fresh waves of despair, beating up in time to her heart: monotonous, interminable.

  ‘Ana! Ana!’ Doina was calling.

  Five minutes later both women were sitting by the table once more, secure in the knowledge that Radu and Ion had reached Frankfurt. The phone call had been brief; Radu had been cut off before he had finished. But she heard him say they had landed, they were safe, and they were about to approach passport control … Then there had been a short silence, followed by a click, and the whine of an engaged tone.

  ‘At least we know they’re there!’ Ana said, feeling relief envelop her like a shroud. An ending, that’s how this news seemed to her – to be received with awe, gratitude, and resignation.

  Doina looked triumphant. ‘I knew they’d make it, Ana. Radu doesn’t get things wrong. But God knows what will happen now …’

  ‘I don’t want to think about it,’ said Ana, ‘in case thinking about it makes it go wrong.’

  ‘But don’t you have to? In any case, that suggests to me you really do believe in the power of the will. Human will.’

  Ana shook her head. ‘Not really. I’d like to think we could change things, by willing them to change, but what evidence is there of that? Look around you. No, I suppose I just accept the power of accident instead – human beings pushed this way and that. OK, sometimes they make decisions but that depends on the way they’d just been pushed before. I see it all – the universe – as mostly random: randomly cruel and sometimes randomly forgiving. But out of my control – especially now.’

  Doina pursed her lips. ‘You amaze me, Ana! Look at what’s already happened – you decide that it would be better for Ion to escape and have the chance of a new life, and that it’s going to take you years to save up enough for both of you to leave – but from the moment you read that article you were starting to make it happen. Just as Radu decided, and made it happen, so did you. You weren’t a victim, any more than he was or I am! You weren’t going to sit back and accept whatever random shit the universe threw in your face. No, Ana! You aren’t so passive. You decided – you chose – you acted … YOU! At least let yourself be comforted by that.’

  ‘Ah, but you see, maybe I don’t want it to be true because I don’t want the blame.’

  Exasperated, Doina banged her fist on the table. ‘You mustn’t start talking about blame. It’s all too negative, Ana, and I didn’t expect it of you. Anyway, I’ve got something to tell you now. I know it’ll shock you, but …’ She inhaled her cigarette, and threw back her head, watching the smoke, with what was almost a small smile of satisfaction hovering at the corners of her mouth.

  Ana waited. Then Doina tossed her head forward again, so that the thick blonde hair waved, Medusa-like, about her face. ‘Ana, six weeks ago I decided I’d escape too. To follow Radu – once I knew he’d reached the West safely. That had to happen first. I can’t wait here; I want to get out as much as he did.’

  ‘But I thought you’d talked it through together. He told me you had … My God, Doina, I don’t believe this! So why didn’t you go with him then?’

  ‘There was only enough money for one, doing it that way – with Muller setting it up. And if Radu had known how I felt he would never have gone without me. But when he was in Bucharest seeing you, Dan Chindris came round, and …’ She hesitated, and let her gaze slide away from Ana’s.

  ‘So I was right?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You’re having an affair with that man – God, Doina, I never imagined you being like that!’

  ‘You don’t know anything, Ana!’ Doina retorted, ‘so don’t jump to conclusions. All right, so it’s partly true. He fell in love with me when we were teaching together, but nothing happened. And then, that time, he came and told me that he was going to escape with another two men – he told me, Ana! That means he trusted me completely. So I told him about Radu. And then I had this great idea, that I could go with Dan, and find Radu. So – yes, I went to bed with him while Radu was away. It didn’t mean anything to me, but it did to Dan. It meant he would take me too.’

  Ana was shocked, and could not speak for a few minutes. Doina stared at her defiantly. Then she whispered, ‘Come on, Ana, try to understand! These are terrible times, and people do terrible things. You know that.’

  ‘Oh yes, I know,’ said Ana, understanding and resenting the implication, ‘but why did you have to …? Why couldn’t you wait and join Radu later?’

  Doina laughed scornfully. ‘Wait? Be harassed by them for two or three years, begging them humbly to let me join my husband, be cross-examined and humiliated and all my passport applications turned down? Wait? And then maybe get it at last, only to find Radu’s met someone else by then? Wait here on my own? God, no – I’d rather die.’ She lit another cigarette with a swift, brusque movement. ‘Dan knows I still love Radu, but he hopes I’ll change. I know I won’t, but that’s my secret. I told him I’d only go once I knew Radu was safely in Germany because that would give me a goal. That’s all right with him … who knows what will happen to us? To any of us? We just seize the chances we can while we can; that’s what Dan’s doing, and I don’t despise him for it.’

  ‘Aren’t you afraid?’

  ‘Choices, Ana. You know it – you just made one. If we can’t take control of our own lives we might as well give up, and join the Party. Radu and I used to talk about being in a concentration camp, and how magnificent it would be to leap on the electric fence and die there, before they could shoot you, or torture you to death. You’d run to your death – you’d choose it! God – that’s what it is to be human. Not to wait here, accepting whatever miseries are dished out to you – patient, like cows in a field. Not for me, Ana! You should know me better.’

  ‘Radu should have known you better then.’

  Doina shrugged. ‘He does know me, but for the last three months all he’s thought about is his own freedom. He’s an artist, Ana; that means he’s selfish. To tell you the truth, I was amazed when he told me he would take Ion. He didn’t really want to, you know, because he didn’t want the responsibility. But he said he couldn’t refuse when you asked him – it was the most important thing anyone had ever asked him to do.’ She paused, and added, almost wistfully, ‘I think Radu really loves you, Ana.’

  Ana put her hand over the other woman’s, where it lay on the table, ugly and red with work. ‘Like a sister, Doina,’ she said, gently.

  ‘Like a sister,’ Doina repeated.

  Then she looked at Ana, as if seeing her for the first time, and said, ‘If you were my sister – and maybe you are, in a way – then you know what I’d say to you?’ Ana shook her head. ‘I’d say … Oh, maybe you shouldn’t have sent Ion away – no, don’t say anything, Ana, I’m not judging you, and I do understand your reasons. It’s just that, in a way, you’ve sacrificed yourself for Ion. It’s you who hates this system, not him! It’s your spirit that’s imprisoned day and night in this hole we have to call our country! So with him gone, what’s left for you? You’ve given him up, for what you see as a greater good, and you’re probably right. But in doing it you’ve given yourself up too, and for what? Grief for him, misery for yourself, and capitulation to … all this.’ She waved her hands around. ‘We’re in a similar position, Ana – and that’s why I say, if you were my sister, I’d tell you to come with me.’

  I knew you were going to say that, Doina, the minute you started to tell me about your plan. I knew you’d challenge me, and I was powerless to stop you. Your smoke curls upwards, acid and stale; I reach for one of your Romanian cigarettes, knowing the taste will make me want to retch; I light four matches before the cigarette glows; I suck the smoke in deeply, wishing it was so easy to draw death within me – anything but to have to choose! Dear God, please remove all these choices from me; I’ve chosen the worst and best thing it will ever be given to me to choose, so please have mercy on me now! />
  ‘Ana,’ Doina went on, in an excited, urgent voice, ‘think about it. This way you could come with us to Hungary – Dan and his friends have organized guides – and then we’ll just try to make it. One of the men is Hungarian – he’s a friend of Laszlo Tokes, by the way – and he’s got good contacts. The plan is to cross Hungary, and into Austria, and then make it to Vienna. There we give ourselves up, and ask for asylum. You say your child’s in Germany, and I say my husband is too – I know they try to reunite refugees. The Red Cross does it all the time. It’ll work, Ana!’

  She was smiling broadly, excitedly, like a small child who has been given exactly what she wants for a birthday, who does not know that after fifteen minutes of play, the longed-for gift will prove disappointing.

  Ana could not bear it. ‘But do you know?’ she murmured. ‘How can you be so sure?’

  ‘Ana, I’m not sure! I don’t know anything – only that I have to try.’

  ‘I’m scared, Doina.’

  ‘For you, or for me?’

  ‘For both of us. We’re so insignificant … And what if we’re caught – or killed? Have you thought of that?’

  ‘Of course I have – but not very much, I admit. That’s a waste of time. But you want me to be truthful? If I’m caught or killed, Radu will go on living his life without me, and maybe he’ll find out that at least I had the courage to make the leap towards him. To try! As for you – if you die, Ion will be adopted by a kind German couple who will give him a good home. If you’re caught, we know it’s prison, but we don’t know for how long. But … him being fostered was a part of your plan, anyway – wasn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t know! I don’t know what I thought then – it seems like another world, when I had Ion, and went to work, and dreamed something that seemed impossible, until suddenly it was bobbing just by my head, and I had to grab it. Maybe I was mad. Maybe I’m mad now. Anyway, suppose we try it, and get caught – I won’t be able to write to him! I won’t know where he is!’ Ana said. ‘He’ll think I’ve … abandoned him.’